Organizational change: business process reengineering or outsourcing?

This article will analyze the logic behind the adoption of Business Process Reengineering and outsourcing. The first part analyzes Business Process Reengineering as a technique for analysis and for defining the business processes implemented by organizations in order to make the achievement of corporate objectives more efficient and effective. Nevertheless, this approach has some limits when the reengineering project aims solely at cost reduction. In any event, for several activities management must constantly evaluate the alternative to turning to outsourcing. In the second part we thus observe what should be the evaluations of management in order to pursue the objectives of maximum efficiency, economic efficiency, and productivity. Starting from the methodological assumptions that aid our understanding of the outsourcing of processes and that represent the operational and conceptual framework for the existence of this approach, several models will be analyzed held to be significant for determining those processes that can be outsourced, from a “strategic” point of view, and that are useful for deciding on the shift from BPR to outsourcing.